THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 23 



unusual mental states, such as hypnosis, the 

 individual can deliver information about mat/- 

 ters which in his normally wakeful condition 

 he seems to be incompetent to produce, and 

 that in this way evidence of memory activity 

 in the subconscious regions of the mind is ad- 

 duced. But that this additional accumulation 

 would bring the shadowy past into anything 

 like the completeness of the present is not for 

 a moment to be imagined. Marvelous as all 

 these processes are, in that they are sugges- 

 tive of hidden and unseen powers, we must 

 still admit, I believe, that memory at best is 

 a most fragmentary affair. This opinion is 

 well expressed by Walt Whitman when, in 

 speaking of the insufficiency of biography, he 

 declares 



Why, even I myself, I often think, know little or 



nothing of my real life ; 

 Only a few hints a few diffused, faint clues and 



indirections. 



But fragmentary as memory is, it is that 

 which binds our personality together ; without 

 it social responsibility would cease to exist. 

 We admit its frailness by translating our ideas 

 into the permanency of the written record. 

 This supplement to memory penetrates our 



